Top officials probed in relation to food crisis

With three million people facing hunger in Malawi, investigators believe high-ranking members of government should be prosecuted for selling off the country's grain reserves. Malawi's Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has issued a report recommending the prosecution of former Minister of Agriculture, Leonard Mangulama, for abuse of office and criminal negligence relating to the sale of the maize. Mangulama now holds the Poverty Alleviation portfolio in the Office of the President. Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Fahad Assani said over the week-end that the ACB had requested his office prosecute Mangulama for allegedly being involved in a US $38 million (Malawi Kwacha 2.7 billion) maize sale, partly blamed for the country's food crisis. According to official estimates about 500 people have died as a result of the food shortage. "I've been asked to deal with this minister so that he pays for 300 mt of maize he got for himself and later resold. I have also been asked to prosecute the minister for abuse of office," Assani said. The ACB report has also named the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) and the country's crop marketer, the Agricultural Development Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), as culprits in mismanagement relating to the procurement and sale of the country's maize stocks. The government was forced to borrow US $35.7 million locally to pay off NFRA debts that were incurred in circumstances bordering on abuse of office and criminal negligence, the ACB report said. The former ADMARC boss and current Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Friday Jumbe, and his ADMARC management have also been accused of contributing to the food crisis and may also face prosecution. "Our investigations have found that the whole show was run by ADMARC and NFRA and so we are in a crisis because of them," ACB Assistant Director of Operations Victor Banda said. The ACB report also names several parliamentarians, from both the opposition and the ruling party, who bought maize from the strategic grain reserves for resale in different markets. Mangulama, while conceding that he bought maize from NFRA, claims that he was not given an opportunity to explain his side of the story. "It's true [that] I bought maize and as I am talking to you the account has not been reconciled and we are in the process of doing that, but these guys [investigators] did not talk to me," he said. President Bakili Muluzi replaced Mangulama with Aleke Banda as Agriculture Minister as soon as the scandal broke. James Nampota, Deputy Director for ACB told IRIN that the bureau's mandate had been to establish corruption. However, his office had concluded that there was no corruption but there was evidence of abuse of office and criminal negligence. It would have meant overstepping the bureau's mandate to question Mangulama when there was no corruption case established, he said. The report says NFRA was cleared by the government of Malawi to sell about 60,000 mt from 166,000 mt stored in the strategic grain reserves (SGR) as it was struggling to offset a US $13 million debt (one billion Kwacha) owed to local banks. This occurred at the same time that ADMARC was selling from the same reserves, the report adds. If Mangulama and the others named in the scandal are prosecuted they could each face a one year jail term. The food shortage crisis in Malawi has largely been blamed on adverse weather, such as floods and prolonged droughts. However, a recent report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said market-based agricultural reforms, pushed for by western donors, had inadvertently undermined food security in Malawi. It alleged that donor agencies, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), contributed to the food crisis in Malawi by urging the government to reduce its role in the production and distribution of food without assuring the emergence of a private sector strong enough to fill the resulting gap. "You now have a situation where neither the government nor the private sector is in place to provide what is necessary. The majority of farmers feel worse-off since the reforms," the report said. The percentage of the World Bank's lending portfolio devoted to agriculture, for example, had fallen from 40 percent to 7 percent over the past 20 years. IPFRI is part of a consortium of agricultural research centres around the world that are closely tied to the World Bank, the world's biggest source of development finance. There have been mixed reactions from local institutions in Malawi. Ollen Mwalubunju, Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), said the sale of the grain reserves had showed that those entrusted by the public had no regard for the welfare of ordinary people.